The diversity project: an ethnography of social justice experiential education programming

ABSTRACT

Whilst adventure-based experiential education traditions have long-standing claims of progressive, democratic learning potential, little research has examined practice from within democratic theories of participation and learning. Focusing on a complex network making up a disturbing interaction in an outdoor education programme, I posit forms of structural management privileging institutional design blockaded democratic forms of interaction when bids arose, while simultaneously identifying the peripheral ‘un-structured’ symbolic spaces beyond the care-gaze of educators as necessary sites of creative emergence. Drawing on the work of Lather [Lather, Patti. 1996. “Troubling Clarity: The Politics of Accessible Language.”Harvard Educational Review 66 (3): 525–546], I explore the peripheral boundaries of traditional ethnographic writing, decentering norms of finality and conclusivity, and invite the reader into a critical interaction with ‘a shifting text’ [Babich, Babette. 1994. Nietzsche's Philosophy of Science: Reflecting Science on the Ground of Art and Life. Albany: State University of New York Press, p. 27] and a chaotic moment in the programme.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical ethnography
• critical pragmatism
• experiential learning
• democratic learning
• outdoor education
• critical theory

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Leisure Research Institute under a 2014 award.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Pseudonyms are used for anonymity.